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You could probably even use the new primiteive type shape, with infinite detail and using textures on that.

But the problem with that..And hypervoxels.. is that you would risc having blobs textures disconnected from the item, sort of floating in the air..if not set up with gradients etc.

And there would also be an issue with the main shape which for hyper voxels would be very limited, the new primitive shape has sphere, cube, cylinder, torus, cone, plane and empty volume for scripting your own shapes I think.

I would probably look in to vdb as mentioned.
A tricky part may be to get the desired pattern/texture..and not just any fancy texture.

I tried this and got a couple of errors. Are these things I should already have? Buying them isn't a problem if necessary.

No..assuming you are using the full 2019 versions, vdb evaluator, and mesh to vdb etc is part of it all natively, no need to buy plugins.
I suspect you tried loading another ones scene that may have additional plugin, or you have simply tried to set it up the wrong way.

Edit..just downloaded that sample scene, in 2019.1.1 and it works here without error.
Mac?
or earlier lightwave version?

No..assuming you are using the full 2019 versions, vdb evaluator, and mesh to vdb etc is part of it all natively, no need to buy plugins.
I suspect you tried loading another ones scene that may have additional plugin, or you have simply tried to set it up the wrong way.

Edit..just downloaded that sample scene, in 2019.1.1 and it works here without error.
Mac?
or earlier lightwave version?

The problem as erikals said is that as the Camera gets closer, the resolution of the Texture needs to go up causing the render times to go WAY up. On the Shape-type Null, the texture resolution is controlled with the Accuracy. With the above example, it was set to 0.05 and on my old, clunky rendering system the final frames were taking about 27 minutes apiece, and rendering a later frame at 0.01 Accuracy would be over an hour:

I've attached the sample scene to play with if you want. Here's the basic setup:

That is the issue with that new feature, and also for a sponge, the structure doesnīt fload freely in air disconnected from the main sponge, that is a problem when using textures like this, you would need to adress that with some gradient or function to clamp it so it disintergrate properly further away from the main sponge.

Would have loved this feature if it was a bit faster to render, and also...completly horrible in interface, you should be able to set it up and access a displacement texture from the item shape directly, which brings you to the surface editor and that nodal displacement texture needed, not jump in to the surface editor after you add this.

So that is also a question of making the workflow easier with the new features, I bet there has been a lof ot folks trying it out, just to discover..aha, and where is the texture, or aha...and itīs darn slow.